HP has just finalized a deal that will put a big smile on the face of Symantec. All new HP PCs and laptops will now ship with a free trial version of Norton Online Backup.

Users will get 30 days of free backups through the service after which point they will be able to subscribe for an annual price of $49.99. The service backs up data on your PC into the cloud giving you online access and restore functionality. It also archives accidentally deleted files, supports bandwidth throttling so you don’t use up your monthly data quota doing backups, encrypts and compresses your data to save on file sizes, and supports up to five different PCs through one account.

If you buy Norton Online Backup 25GB as advertised on the Symantec website you get 25GB of backup storage for $49.99. However, the version that comes with your new HP machine only offers 5GB of storage and it is unclear if that gets upgraded to 25GB when you choose to subscribe. So check before signing up if you decide to keep using the service.